Some of the most remarkable plants in the Cerrado include the conspicuous Mauritia flexuosa palms (known locally as buritis) that grow along the swampy headwaters of streams and rivers, and the spectacular trees of the genus Tabebuia (of the family Bignoniaceae, and referred to as ipê), which have brilliant pink, yellow, white and purple flowers.

A subsequent herbarium search at the Field Museum in Chicago, then the world’s largest collection of Peruvian plants, uncovered but a single specimen, collected by an anthropologist more than a decade earlier and identified as Mussatia hyacinthina of the Bignoniaceae.